Guillermo Del Toro's "Mountains Of Madness"

[Ray]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynI5g6JWfQk&list=UUp_saNOwIsNTINihzShSNNw



Really, there’s only one correct answer here. We all want a good HP Lovecraft movie, rhere have been good movies inspired by HP Lovecraft. Including John Carpenters The Thing, The Re-Animator but never a decent and accurate adaptation of Lovecrafts creepy, dark, mysterious and atmospheric stories.

Guillermo del Toro is once again saying he’ll give us one, But, like all things Lovecraftian, this will come at great cost. At the cost of an R-rating!

Del Toro has worked out a deal with Legendary Pictures to deliver a PG-13 adaptation of At the Mountains of Madness...which is going to be interesting, since that means he won’t be able to show much blood, gore, or heroes losing all their sanity in the face of tentacle faced existential horror.

Yeah, I understand why Legendary said they'd only produce it if it had a PG-13 Rating. Big budget R-Rated horror movies are a big gamble. But C'mon, its Lovecraft!

I hope Del Toro can a pull a good movie out of this within the boundaries the studio has put upon him. I really like him and don't want this to be his first bad or even subpar film.

[Chuckman]

Actually, in modern times, I think it's best that it be PG-13. There's nothing in the novella that demands that presentation be a hard-R gorefest.

[Ray]

Well. . . maybe. But I'm still not so sure this story can be presented or the existential horror be presented to its full potential if it isn't an R rating.

[NemZ]

You forgot the rest of Carpenter's armageddon trillogy: "In the Mouth of Madness" and "Prince of Darkness".

I dunno, all things considered I'd rather see Tim Burton's take on 'the Innsmouth look'.

[Kazuki_Fuse]

I thought Stuart Gordon's Dagon was really great. Lots of cheesy effects, but still quite an enjoyable film. Also, even though its titled Dagon, its actually more an adaptation of The Shadow Over Innsmouth.

[Ray]

The reason I'm terrified this movie will not take off, or be a failure, or a subpar film, is because if its authentic to the story Lovecraft's nihilistic worldview instance may alienate all but the most devoted of the audience. Or if the story will be Nuetered and never reach its full potential with the Pg-13 Rating, attempting to appeal to a mass audience, and in the end not really appeal to anyone. The Lovecraft fans and Horror fans wont like it because its not True to Lovecraft's Vision or not at all scary, and the casual audience member wont go see it because they'll be turned off by the nihilistic themes source material.

Furthermore Lovecrafts stories are subtle, creepy, and often end with the main characters losing their sanity or outright becoming the Lovecraftian beings they fight (The One exception I can think of being The Color Out Of Space) . . . but most big budget PG-13 Hollywood blockbusters are loud, gung-ho, kill the bad guy, save the day etc. Can a Big Budget Cosmic Horror movie really stand on its own two feet in an Era of superheroes and reboots? Especially now that its been neutered by the studios with a PG-13 rating?

I like Lovecraft's style of writing, and his contributions to the then just developing genre of Science Fiction. But his writings are an extremely acquired taste, at least for me, and the world he created is not an optimistic one. It's actually quite depressing, and continuously reenforces the notion that Mankind is not important, and that the human soul doesn't exist.

Would such as pessimistic and depressing movie really sell to an audience?

[Gendo'sPapa]

I've read the script to his "At the Mountains of Madness" adaptation. Lovecraft's original is wonderful but it doesn't translate well to screen & Del Toro doesn't even try to be faithful to the text. Basically what Del Toro did was turn Madness into a hybrid of King Kong & The Thing. A bunch of roughnecks/explorers/scientists/woman/whatever stereotype I missed travel to some ancient ruins for various reasons. One guy's a filmmaker so he's always recording things. They get there & it just turns out the ruins are inhabited by shape shifters that impersonate animals & then the crew as they start killing them off violently one by one.

The only real Lovecraft in his script is he drops in a lot of names from the original text & has an exposition dump that superficially touches on what the original text was about. The rest is all big explosions & gore. ...And tentacles. LOTS of tentacles.

Del Toro's film would be a good body horror movie but there's nothing existential about it. It's John Carpenter's The Thing with larger action scenes & modern day CGI.

...So it's prequel to John Carptenter's The Thing that was called.... The Thing... but better. It would be a fun, dumb horror blockbuster but nothing true in tone to H.P. Lovecraft.

[NemZ]

That's disheartening. He's totally missing the point, but to be fair the story just doesn't work as a movie without a LOT of editing. You just can't have someone pontificate on the history of the elder things for half an hour in a horror movie.

I think ultimately to do Lovecraft right as a movie you'd have to do something original, maybe not even let people know it's a lovecraft thing until halfway in. Intentionally pull a bait and switch with it starting out as a typical detective thriller Dan Brown sort of thing, then take a wild turn. Sort of like Lord of Illusions.

[Gendo'sPapa]

Yeah. His script sells a fun, gory but juvenile adventure story. Nothing Lovecraft about it except it names the shapeshifting Thing like monsters as Shoggoths & drops the names Elder Things & - of course - Cthulhu.

To correctly go for a Lovecraftian tone a filmmaker would have to go for a small & intimate tone & not a $200 million adventure blockbuster with Tom Cruise starring - who was Del Toro's first chocie for a lead.

Though I've heard inklings from friends that the super independent feature Del Toro wants to do with John Hurt right before he dives into production on Pacific Rim II is heavily inspired by Lovecraft.

[delispin25]

Del Toro has worked out a deal with Legendary Pictures to deliver a PG-13 adaptation of At the Mountains of Madness...which is going to be interesting, since that means he won’t be able to show much blood, gore, or heroes losing all their sanity in the face of tentacle faced existential horror.

I was really hoping this would have lots of gore and body horror. Now if the movie really is a dud, not even some good gore can save it.

[Chuckman]

That's disheartening. He's totally missing the point, but to be fair the story just doesn't work as a movie without a LOT of editing. You just can't have someone pontificate on the history of the elder things for half an hour in a horror movie.

What you're looking for is called True Detective.

The problem with a Lovecraft adaptation is that an audience isn't going to see anything new in it, and they won't care that originated the things that he already feel trite. This is what happened to John Carter (along with an abominable marketing campaign) which was actually a good movie, other than the fact that Deja Thoris wasn't naked through the whole thing, as in the books.

[Shinoyami65]

Yeah, it's probably going to be difficult if not impossible to capture the tension and horror of the initial investigation, the weird otherworldly biology of the Elder Things, the scope and impossible architecture of the city of the Elder Things, and the terror that is the Shoggoth in mere PG-13.

And I doubt 'Tekeli-li' is going to sound as horrifying in the movie as what I imagine it to sound like.

[Gendo'sPapa]

^ That brings up memories of Exorcist II: The Heretic when it's revealed the terrifiyng demon from the original movie is actually named Pazuzu.

Nothing that is called by the name Pazuzu can be scary. That name should belong to fluffy Corgi puppy & adorable pink eared bunny rabbits.

[Mr. Tines]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pazuzu

[NemZ]

What you're looking for is called True Detective.

No... what I want is True Detective where there actually is something explicitly supernatural and fundamentally ungrokable going on. Not just some oddly sophisticated hillbilly but goddamn noneuclidean squid beasts that eat colors and shit war crimes.

[StarShaper7]

If del Toro ever gets to make Hellboy III (which I really hope he does) then it will probably feature something similar to Lovecraftian eldritch abominations. He's said that Hellboy III would deal with the apocalypse the titular red dude could play a part in. But the movie wouldn't really play out like a Lovecraft novella, so the existential dread element wouldn't really be prominent, perhaps even non-existent, in favor of the spectacle such a monster could inspire.

If del Toro ever does make a Lovecraft movie, I expect it will be in a similar vein to the Silent Hill film adaptation. So, not much real horror but the visuals, designs, set pieces and all that stuff that adds to the visceral quality of a film would take focus. I would actually prefer del Toro to go this route. I doubt he would be able to do a faithful adaptation that was actually good, so something like this would be more in his neighborhood. It would work to his strengths as a director.

No... what I want is True Detective where there actually is something explicitly supernatural and fundamentally ungrokable going on.

As Chuckman would say: the owls are not what they seem.

[Shinoyami65]

No... what I want is True Detective where there actually is something explicitly supernatural and fundamentally ungrokable going on. Not just some oddly sophisticated hillbilly but goddamn noneuclidean squid beasts that eat colors and shit war crimes.

He eats time as he is walking through the forest.

[Ray]

Well. . . as much as I respect him as a director. Del Toro, at least for me. Just doesn't seem to get Lovecraft, personally I blame his strict Catholic upbringing for that. He seems to focus on Lovecraft's Aesthetics, the tentacles, the monsters, the European main character. But the spirit of what made Lovecraft scary in the first place is lost in translation.

That's the thing a lot of directors of Lovecraft adaptations fail at. They're fine with the aesthetics, but not with the deeper themes. Not to mention too often the Aesthetics tend to undermine Lovecraft's original intent.

Take Re-Animator for instance. it's pretty much an adaptation in name only. It's not really scary. The excessive Blood, Gore, and Gratuitous Nudity make it stop being scary and instead make it stupid, pandering, and disgusting. Lovecraft never titillated his audience due to his personal issues with such things due to his overwhelming conservative lifestyle and sheltered upbringing, and to be perfectly honest that's what makes his horror so effective.

Speaking for me personally. It's not the Tentacled monsters Lovecraft created that make it scary, not the blood or gore, or the 'unspeakable rites' his racist stereotype natives perform. It's the social, political, religious, and scientific implications of the Giant tentacled monsters that make it scary.

It's the fact that the giant monster is something the nature of a purely mechanical universe favored to be the superior Lifeform. That there is no loving and caring God on your side, that good and evil as we understand them don't exist, that the world and by extension all of humanity might as well be specks of sand on the gears of the universe. That these things are so powerful and so beyond our control. that the second you make contact with them, they've won.

But that doesn't really lend itself to a big budget Hollywood blockbuster, starring Tom Cruise.